AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That’s it? No warning or greeting? You just come and go as you please?”
“I do have much business handle...There are many, many notes here,” Aziz said.
“There are many, many rooms.” Laine sucked in her cheeks. “I’ve been trying to get an overall plan together, but am stalled by the aforementioned absences and weather. It’s cooked my glues and paints!”
“We can order more supplies. That is not a problem.”
“I know what we need. I just was packing things so fast, and I didn’t have time to oversee what samples got put in, and the assistants don’t know what they’re doing. They didn’t pack the right stuff.”
Aziz strolled past her and ran his fingertips over the runny paint. “This is disgusting.”
“Yes, it is.” Laine smoothed her hands over her hair. A weight settled on her chest. She wasn’t sure how she could finish this job in two weeks. She had even less time, now that she’d spent so much time trying to work out what to do.
Laine’s mental deliberations were cut short as Aziz turned and smeared the paint across her cheek.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“It still spreads well enough!” he teased.
Laine put her hands on her hips. “But it won’t go on evenly!”
“I suppose we’ll have to see about that! Let me try another color…”
Laine stared him down and then reached for a different brush. Aziz didn’t back away as she painted glue over his chest.
“This isn’t paint,” he said.
She picked up her notebook, scribbled on it, and then tore out the page and stuck it to his chest. It read, “Big Fancy Accountant.”
“Big— Laine!” Aziz gasped. “I am not an accountant!”
“Mm-hm.”
“I manage the vast, vast holdings of our family’s estate—”
Laine just smiled.
“Which are both local to the Middle East and international!” Aziz turned as Laine stepped away to look at her notes. “And I consult on economic policy for our nation…”
After a moment of silence, Laine looked back just in time to see a can of cerulean blue being tipped over her head.
“Ah!”
“It is a good color on you!”
Laine huffed and grabbed a brush to swat his expensive suit with an emerald green.
Cans tipped, paint flew, glue splattered, as the two of them weaponized Laine’s now useless inventory of decorating samples. Aziz laughed heartily, and Laine wheezed, and a few minutes later, both collapsed against the wall.
Laine shook her head. “That’s one way to liquidate unusable stock.”
“The wall looks better now!” Aziz said.
Laine tilted her head back to see the splatters. “Absolutely not. That looks like a five-year-old did it.”
Aziz chuckled. “You should keep it. I will show it to Amin, and I will tell him we will do the whole palace in this style.”
“So you don’t like your brother much,” Laine joked.
“He had no interest in continuing the renovations. It is up to me, unfortunately, and he has not approved so far.”
“No one likes a backseat decorator. Take a picture of it and send it to him. People who don’t know much about art probably think it all looks like this now anyway.” Laine wiped paint from her forehead. The two of them looked like walking collages.
“Ah. This is true. I should take you to our modern art museum. People don’t think about Bahrain for art, but we are growing in that area quickly.” Aziz took her hand and let the paint smear together until purple oozed between their fingers.
“I admit that I don’t. But I honestly haven’t been in the art buying game for a while. I’m too busy with designing.”
“You selected those lovely pieces in your apartment,” Aziz argued. “You have an eye for it, even if you don’t spend every day discovering what others think.”
Laine pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. There was no reason not to explain to him where the paintings had come from, really. In some small way, though, she didn’t want him to know about her abandoned hobby.
“What is it?” Aziz asked.
“Well, to be honest, I didn’t select those paintings.”
Aziz’s face fell. “I see. So…you have another do that for you? Should I fly this person out as well, so you can do your job more efficiently?”
Laine made a noise. “I’m perfectly capable doing my job.”
“I did not mean to offend, but I would like some of that sense of art in the redesign.”
Laine stared at him hard. “I didn’t pick them out because I painted them, Aziz. I painted them years ago. You don’t need to hire someone else. You just need to get me paint I can actually work with. I’ll arrange for everything else.”
